Night Mode LabsBlue Book
Assessment Playbooks

Maturity Model

Use the maturity model to turn discovery findings into a shared view of risk and sequencing. Scores are not grades; they are backlog inputs.

Scoring levels

LevelMeaning
1Ad hoc, manual, undocumented, or hero-driven
2Repeatable in pockets, but inconsistent across teams
3Defined standard with known owners and partial automation
4Automated, measured, and adopted by most teams
5Continuously improved with clear evidence and feedback loops

Assessment dimensions

Score each domain independently.

  • Delivery safety: tests, approvals, rollout, rollback, and release visibility.
  • Infrastructure control: infrastructure-as-code, drift detection, state ownership, and review process.
  • Security posture: identity, secrets, vulnerability management, policy, and least privilege.
  • Reliability: observability, SLOs, incident response, capacity, and recovery.
  • Developer experience: onboarding, local workflow, paved roads, and support quality.
  • Governance: audit evidence, exceptions, ownership, and control mapping.
  • Cost: allocation, tagging, budget alerts, and optimization cadence.

Assessment output

Using scores

  • Prioritize low maturity in high-impact systems first.
  • Convert each low score into a concrete risk statement.
  • Avoid averaging scores across unrelated domains.
  • Reassess after major releases, incidents, or platform changes.
  • Use evidence from systems of record rather than opinion alone.

A score without evidence is a conversation starter, not a conclusion.

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